We drove to Kailua on Sunday to see the new Whole Foods store. We walked through once soon after the store opened, but hadn’t really had a chance to shop.
We saw it, but couldn’t find parking. It was amazingly busy. Driving endlessly around a full parking lot praying to be the first to spot someone leaving is just about my definition of Hell. I broke before finding a spot, and drove over to the adjacent parking area in front of Foodland.
The Kailua Foodland has been our more “upscale” place to shop, way better in terms of products and display than our regular Foodland that anchors the Windward City Shopping Center back in Kaneohe. Today it was different. Whole Foods seemed to have sucked the oxygen out of the place. It was almost empty. Very few shoppers. If customers don’t return to Foodland after the Whole Foods novelty wears off, that store is going to be in trouble. And with Safeway just down the street competing for the “less than Whole Foods” market, it could be brutal competition.
We detoured to Kailua on our drive home Thursday afternoon and this time easily found parking at Whole Foods. The store certainly does set a new standard in displays, selection, range of organic, nitrate-free, and other healthy choices, marketing (store samples seemed to be succeeding in moving products), etc. We immediately saw the Whole Foods attack on the local myth that everyone is happy with squishy bread, the kind that allows you to mash an entire loaf into a lump the size of a golf ball. WF offers an amazing array of bread choices, both locally baked and those shipped in from the mainland. And why did it take a mainland chain to bring so many great local products to consumers, and one with only a handful of Hawaii stores? Prices are generally higher than the local norm, and, from the full parking lot and crowded aisles, it appears people are willing to pay the difference to get the increased choice and better products.
Local supermarkets, like local government, have been pretty conservative. Product choices are generally limited. Meda has taken to calling the wall of bread in the Kaneohe Safeway store the “Communist bread market” because of the very limited range of mediocre breads presented as if offering real variety. The general assumption is that products and choices just need to be “good enough” to please consumers, so local stores haven’t set their targets any higher, instead assuming we all want the cheapest prices at the expense of the best products, and marketing pushes people in that direction. Competition ends up being primarily on price.
We’ve been watching Safeway and Foodland slowly ramp up for the Whole Foods competition on the Windward side over the last year, adding a few new organic products and shuffling displays in their stores. But it looks like too little, too late.
This morning, on our daily walk at dawn, we asked several younger generation friends what they think about Whole Foods. Local, haole, didn’t make a difference. All said they “love” Whole Foods and just wish there was one in Kaneohe.
Whole Foods challenges the whole local paradigm. And we’re seeing that consumers want good food, increased diversity, healthy choices, and are willing to pay for it all. It’s not just a grocery store, it’s kind of an experience. And that’s not just in Hawaii. The company’s stock is at an all-time high, and rising, so this is going on elsewhere as well.
One of these days we’re going to get a political personality or party that brings the same kind of challenge to our little choice, conservative bias politics. And when that happens, I expect local residents will respond similarly.
Ah yes, Whole Foods….the Apple Computer of grocery stores. It’s kewl.
I try to do Foodland on Thursday, 5% senior discount day, but rarely find much to buy. Most of the deli items are non-nutritional, a big turn off. Safeways, too. Thanks for your input.
Idk… Down to Earth has a decent selection of local produce & products. and has been holding its own w/Safeway & Foodland… and believe it or not, they’re not as expensive (at least in stuff I buy) compared to Whole Foods. I don’t eat meat or eggs, so that leaves a lot out for me @ WF’s deli; too much risk of cross-contamination. If you have egg allergies, that’s not good.
DTE wouldn’t have made it if the ‘local assumption’ was true; they’ve carried Agnes’s Bakery bread & others for as long as I can remember going there – from ’82 – so it’s not a new idea.
Whole Foods changes the game for many of the grocers in Kailua, but hopefully that will mean better prices all around for consumers.
Competition is good.
By the way, Ian, there is a three story parking garage just across the street fronting Long’s – not more than a blco to walk.
Surprised that you are a Foodland fan – have always found their selection extremely limited and prices generally higher.
DTE has picked up its advertising with the approach of Whole Paycheck . . . ooops, that’s what many call it on the mainland – touting their 35th anniversary in print and w banners.
Actually I have found WF’s prices on a number of vegan items to be cheaper than DTE (even with the Vegetarian Society 5% discount)
I am culturally maladapted to Whole Foods. And financially inadequate.
I will continue to buy at Windward Mall Farmers’ market, where an amazing percentage of the fruits and vegetables are vegetarian.
That should have been “maladapted.”
(Wish there were an editing option.)
“less than Whole Foods” market = the best description of Safeway! A+++
“One of these days we’re going to get a political personality or party that brings the same kind of challenge to our little choice, conservative bias politics.”
Before this can happen, our cargo-cult/plantation mentality has got to go. This may take another century — Mississippi and Tennessee are good examples.
we did produce a very powerful political personality….. but he had to build his career elsewhere:
http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/2007/Feb/10/ln/FP702100346.html
One interesting tidbit from the Advertiser article:
“The 1,200 students at Punahou were a diverse group when he graduated in 1979….”
Punahou has grown a lot since then. According to their website, enrollment now is 3760.
Where are the protesters? The one’s who said the world as we know it would end if Whole Foods opened in Kailua?
they weren’t pissed about whole foods. they were pissed about replacing a crappy run down big box store with a nice new one. something about more people would want to shop at the new one, b/c it was going to be nice and new.
I don’t really compare politicians to bread but I do like the nutty kind. . . bread, that is.
The Keep It Kailua NIMBYs are gearing up to support the City Council’s Bill 11 to ban commercial watersports companies & other businesses from using Kailua Beach Park and Kalama Beach Park in order to mortally wound the entire business community in downtown Kailua.
The bill is the first item on the public hearing agenda set for 2 pm, WEdnesday, May 9, at the Pali Golf Course which is on the mauka side of Kamehameha Highway opposite the Hawaii Pacific University Windward campus.
The KIK people are also raising traffic issues and public safety issues to the City in issuing permits for the Target store to be built where the old Don Quijote/Daie/Holiday Mart used to to be next to the Kailua Post Office.
KIK also opposes building a visitor center to be located either in downtown Kailua or at the edge of Kawainui Marsh opposite Le Jardin Academy.
And of course, they don’t want a landfill in the 96734 Zipcode either.
KIK doesn’t understand that mortally wounding the visitor industry is the best argument for having a new landfill built just mauka of Kawainui Marsh. Protecting the visitor industry is the #1 reason why the Leeward folks want the existing landfill shut down – although the HISupremes have intervened in the decision to move it somewhere else.
What I strongly suggest is that KIK support a ballot issue to secede Kailua from the City & County of Honolulu, the State of Hawai`i, and the United States of America in order to set up its own country with its own laws & regulations with strong support for the ROWP who can afford to run it with low/no taxes.
Too late to worry about keeping it Kailua. I lived in it decades ago when it was a sleepy beach town. Now when I visit, it’s like i woke up in Newport Beach.
cwd, while i respect everyone’s opinion that Kailua should just stfu about all the double-decker buses, traffic, tourists & money it brings to KR, try getting through Kailua when the giant tour busses let out their passengers. It’s nearly impossible, not to mention dangerous. The “Touri” don’t just cross the street out of crosswalks – they walk when they do it, oftentimes with no warning whatsoever that they’re going to veer into traffic. 25 mph is a joke; you’re lucky to go 10 now. Parking @ the beach is nearly impossible. Kayak guys park anywhere they can get away with it and block the vision of those who are trying to dodge tourists.
The changes that KR brought to Kailua are killing a good thing, that’s all I know. I’m all for people coming to see how wonderful it is – but within reason. Why not shuttles instead of huge Roberts Hawaii tour buses? Why not explain some simple traffic laws to folks when they get here? And why build more businesses in such a small area that will possibly double the traffic on inadequate roads? $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ pure & simple. Welcome to Kailuafornia, my okole.
Here’s a book review from a couple of days ago in the WSJ, that covered the emergence of KFC and Birdseye, as well as elite traditionalist food movements in New York City. The reality is that America food in the 1950s was so very awful that even fast food and frozen food and pure snob appeal were huge improvements.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304723304577367892779534460.html?KEYWORDS=food+colonel+sanders
Yuck.
I remember reading that early colonists in the Americas lived almost exclusively on chipped beef and beer. Later, when the colonists did prosper, there was an emphasis on the sheer volume of food consumed in a single meal over quality (perhaps a legacy of deprivation). Also, settlers in the western US typically spent their lives living on bacon and pancakes fried in bacon oil. American food did develop, but WWII involved massive shortages and introduced standardization. For example, in the 1950s, Americans turned from beer that was basically identical to European beer to the cheaper industrialized “beer” that most of them still drink today; there were hundreds of varieties of apples that Americans ate, and they were as sweet as candy, but there was a shift to the Red Delicious and other (bland) varieties because they are hard, round and of uniform size and shape, and so can be easily sorted by machines for shipping.
Also, American food policy was revolutionized during the Nixon Administration by Sec. of Agriculture Earl Butz. From the wiki on him:
As I understand it, prior to this policy change, Americans paid about a third of their income for food, similar to what the French still pay, but now it is much lower. (On the Huffington Post, I just found the following statistic: “In 1949, Americans spent 22% of their income on food, whereas in 2009 they spent a meager 10%.” It contradicts what I remember.) This involves a shift to industrial farming, corporate control, junk food (based on corn) and obesity. People like Butz lived through deprivation and so desired quantity. Now we have to pick up the pieces.
Whole foods seems to be a hybrid in a way, appealing both to the elites and to the masses.
Here’s a 2010 New Yorker profile of the CEO of Whole Foods, John Mackey. From what I remember of the article, Mackey is a very conflicted and passionate man, and his store contains the same contradictions that one finds in the man.
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/01/04/100104fa_fact_paumgarten
The point of what I wrote above is that all of these developments in the food sector in the 1950s — fast food, frozen food, high cuisine — represented big progress … at the time. Whole Foods seems a piece with that.
You state that this sleepy lil’ conservative town may get shaken up politically someday by the emergence of new, quality choices, similar to the eye-opening variety at Whole Foods.
Something like that happened with the union movement when it first emerged in Hawaii. Much of the union leadership here were not progressive or liberal or socialist — they were communists. Now that’s a radical new option! But once the Democratic Party came to power in Hawaii, there is a sense that the unions became feudal fiefdoms run for personal profit.
The Internet first promised political revolution. Remember those halcion days! That culminated with Barack Obama’s skillful use of the Internet to garner the votes and dollars of the young and progressive. It’s interesting, however, that Obama has turned out to be little more than a clever, ambitious, culturally conservative, technocratic, career politician little different from Mitt Romney.
However, social media have proven to be (and are still) decisive in the revolutions that swept north Africa and the Middle East. Too bad it seems like reactionaries are taking power there.
I remember when Aloha Tower Market Place was re-developed in the 1990s. Even on weekday nights there would be throngs of young people interacting. I remember someone telling me that it was more like a Spanish-speaking country, where after the sun sets even sleepy little villages come to life, not like the usual locals hanging out with their clique from high school at Zippy’s. But all those young people at Gordon Biersch got married, moved to Mililani and had 2.4 kids.
Some day in Hawaii, as you state, there will emerge a “political personality or party that brings the same kind of challenge to our little choice, conservative bias politics” …
… for about one day!
That’s about how long Abercrombie’s New Day agenda lasted!
Neil Abercrombie is the great political challenge to the status quo that you dream of. But it turns out that more people are interested in building houses on ag lands, getting rail jobs and having a casino in Waikiki than in health and education.